international women's day

(this was an article I wrote for an international womens' day presentation (on March 9th))
The women are the heartbeat of our neighborhood in Plan 3 mil. They are the schoolboard, the neighborhood watch, the nurses, the teachers, and the mentors. Many work during the day and still maintain their households single-handedly. They sell food in the markets, carting vegetables all over the city. They wash clothing by hand for hours on end, They wake up at 3am in order to make empanadas to sell outside of schools before class begins. The wage of a woman is roughly one fourth of that of a man. They dedicate their lives to keep their households and the neighborhood running. Because of a great migration to Spain and other countries, many women have become in charge of children that have been left behind as well. And yet with so many challenges, these women are some of the most joyful people I know.
There are many people who fit this discription, but woman who stands out to me is Marisol. She is about 30 years old, her household is made up of her husband and her father, 5 children, plus she’s raising her 2 year-old blind niece (her brother’s been in Spain since before the girl was born). I met her in a nutrition group for mothers and their babies. Since then she’s participated in several courses (some given in collaboration with MCC) oriented towards creating small businesses. She has been selling painted handbags for about a year now, and I help her calculate her costs and profits. What strikes me most about her is her courage. She searches for the truth in a situation and speaks to it, breaking through politics or cultural norms which entangle the majority. Once she told me that she heard her neighbor beating his pregnant wife and she said her head shot up over their fence and without thinking she yelled, “if you really want to fight someone, let me find someone your own size.” Her husband got mad at her and said that the man could’ve gone after her and she shouldn’t interfere. She assured him it didn’t matter, that at least she had stopped him. Of all the women I know, she is the one of the only ones who attempts to negotiate with her husband about how much money he spends on alcohol, asking him how many years ago he supposes they could’ve finished their house if he had spent that money on construction materials. I admire her so much and I wonder whether she is conscious of what a gift she really is to those around her, what she does for all of us to give us hope that we too might be so sincere. Recently in reading John Paul Lederach’s book, The Moral Imagination, I found an excerpt that explains so much about the women to which I’m referring. Lederach’s term for this is “voicewalker,” and I will close with an excerpt that defines it.

“ I have known a lot of voicewalkers in my life. They rarely stand out immediately. You come to recognize them after awhile more than from first impressions. Lives don’t speak in one-time conversations. They speak over time. You may notice them first for the things they don’t confuse. They don’t confuse their job or activities with who they are as people. They don’t confuse getting credit with success, or recognition with self-woth. They don’t confuse criticism for an enemy. They don’t confuse truth with social or political power. They don’t confuse their work with saving the world. They don’t confuse guilt with motivation.
Then you amy notice something that is not so easy to put a finger on: It is not so much what they do as who they are that makes a difference. They listen in a way that their own agenda does not seem to be in the way. They respond more from love than fear. They laugh at themselves. They cry with others’ pain, but never take over their journey. They know when to say no and have the courage to do it. They work hard but are rarely too busy. Their life speaks. (Ledarach, The Moral Imagination p.167)

At this moment I am happy to announce that I have survived my last carnival in Bolivia (or so I think). Of all the traditions I’ve come accustomed to, carnival is probably my least favorite. Of all the MCCers, both Bolivians and foreigners, the only people I’ve been able to perceive that they truly enjoy this crazy time are twentyish year old North American boys, participating in MCCs one year program for young adults. What I saw the first year with a few mischievous boys was confirmed this year in Caleb, whose imgages I’m borrowing because I wasn’t up for the paint fight.
Since the great majority of Bolivian MCCers are part of the evangelical church and not the catholic church, this means they are expected to attend church camps designed especially for youth to avoid all that carnival entails. Unfortunately the mosquitos (this has been a particularly bad year for dengue fever) hour long lines for food and for the bathroom can discourage even the most pious of churchgoer.
The activities of carnival are varied depending on which part of the country and family customs. In Santa Cruz, events began Saturday afternoon with a big parade of comparsas, groups of people who have matching outfits (the most common in Santa Cruz is a disposable-like brightly colored robe). If you go out on Saturday afternoon or Sunday, you are likely to get hit with a waterballoon or a bucket of water. Monday turns a little dirtier with paints. In the meantime, there are block parties with lots and lots of dancing and drinking into the night. I predict most members of wealthy comparsas are drunk from Saturday afternoon through Tuesday night. Tuesday brings balloons the nastiest of things, including motor oil, urine, or dirty water fished out of the gutters., as well as drunk and angry people. I am told that in other cities, it is much less lawless than Santa Cruz.
Our first year we spent in the Baptist camp. The second we happily traveled out of Santa Cruz to the quaint town of Buena Vista, about an hour and a half north of the city. We had plans this year to go out to a farm of some friends, but the rains filled up the four places where we had to cross a river on the way, and so we stayed at home. We hid out for the most part, had a few meal exchanges with the nuns. We had another plan to go to another friend’s farm close by one morning to drink “ambrosia” which is made by milking the cow into a cup, squirting in some alcohol purely for sterilizing purposes (wink wink) and drinking it up in one gulp. I’ve never seen this process, but I’m told it’s just lovely. Unfortunately we couldn’t find affordable transportation to take us the 13km to the farm. In the end, this event turned into a churrasco (BBQ) at the persons’ local home. Apparently one of the four cows was giving birth and the calf’s head was too big, so, as they say here, we made her into meat. There was a strange mix of sadness and joy at the pile of meat cooking up on the coals. The festive drink, since we couldn’t have a cow to milk at our disposure, became sucumbe, which is made by boiling milk, cinnamon, sugar and vanilla, then adding a few raw eggs and beating the mixture until it foams, then serving it with grape alcohol (similar to pisco). The men of the party, who I’m told arrived drunk to the party, began telling terrible jokes and I began calculating how many rounds of sucumbe I would need in order to find them funny. Meanwhile the ladies would every once in awhile come along with a bucket of water and pour it over your head. I indulged in the pouring once, but I didn’t have a ton of satisfaction since no one ran away from me and there was no competition. Ultimately, I decided to sit there soberly and wait for the moment when I thought we could escape without being totally rude. Carnival is a bit of a mystery to me. Why do people like it? Why don’t I like it? I’m not sure if I’ll ever know for sure, but I found it very interesting what my drunk friend Walter told me, “ you have to take this moment to be happy, because who knows if you’re going to wake up tomorrow.” He went on to tell stories of young people in the neighborhood, dying suddenly for different reasons. The whole conccpt of carnaval is doing everything you like doing that God wouldn’t want you to, in order to repent on Ash Wednesday. Walter’s idea of a good time that God doesn’t approve of is getting sloshed and telling dirty jokes …what do I enjoy doing that God doesn’t want me to enjoy? Envying peoples’ care packages of dark chocolate, demanding cheap prices for clothing, reveling in my enemies’ downfall. It’s all so abstract and circumstantial I’m not sure how I’d fit it into three days of revelry. I don’t really have a good conclusion for all of this, but this quote from Thomas Merton kind of touches at a truth I think I´m looking for with these questions.

¨The basic and most fundamental problem of the spiritual life is this acceptance of our hidden and dark self, with which we tend to identify all the evil that is in us. We must learn by discernment to separate the evil growth of our actions from the good ground of the soul. And we must prepare that ground so that a new life can grow up from it within us, beyond our knowledge and beyond our conscious control. The sacred attitude is, then, one of reverence, awe and silence before the mystery that begins to take place within us when we become aware of our innermost self. In silence, hope, expectation, and unknowing, the man of faith abandons himself to the divine will: not as an arbitrary and magic power whose decrees must be spelled out from cryptic ciphers, but as to the stream of reality and life itself. The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.¨

Thomas Merton. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. William H. Shannon, editor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003): 55.

muito gostoso

Two days after we arrived from Peru, we embarked on yet another journey to a South American neighbor of Bolivia. This time on a 20 hour bus ride to Brasil. With 11 other members of our communitey, we journeyed through the night along the Jesuit mission towns of San Javier, Concepcion, San Ignacio, San Matias, until finally crossing the boarder of Brasil to the large town of Caceres.
The town is part of the province of Matto Grosso, whose capital, Cuiaba about a hundred years ago was the destination of four nuns of The Immaculate Conception of Emilie, an order dedicated to serving the poor and specifically, the sick. In our neighborhood, that takes the form of a natural medicine clinic where exams, massages and herbs are provided to all those who need treatment. Those who can pay do, and those who can’t are also served.
The reason for the pilgrimage was to learn a little more about the history of these holy ladies in South America (we stayed at a retreat center of the order) as well as to meet with a Jesuit Priest who helped found the examining technique applied in our natural medicine clinic. He provided for us a workshop revealing his latest research in the treatment of diabetes and HIV. He says he has cured people of HIV, but has to do so quietly because the pharmaceutical companies charging Brazilians $350 a month for the medicine to slow down the virus don’t want to learn about a cure.
The trip also included an excursion to the Paraguay River, a soda on a house-boat like restaurant sitting on the water, a night of exchange between a Dancing Troupe dedicated to preserving the dances of Matto Grosso and the Bolivians (and for good measure Chris and I offered a performance of The Long Black Veil and Amazing Grace), Mass in the Cathedral followed by an impromptu performance of Capuera in the plaza.
Such good times were had by all that I don’t think the breaking down of the bus on the way home and the five hour delay really phased anyone (ok, I was pretty annoyed), but we successfully negotiated with the driver to hire a different bus so that we didn’t have to spend the night in the small town where the engine breathed its last breath. We did have to pay a bit extra, but in the words of an Irishman making his way from the boarder to Santa Cruz, “ that was the best half Euro I ever spent.”
ps. the title of the blog is one of the few phrases I learned in portuguese, meaning ¨very pleasing¨..I´d tell the cook each time I was fed.

Peru

I had a very unique opportunity at the beginning of January to participate in a Suzuki Festival in Lima, Peru. The first week included a philosophy class and the second a training for how to teach the first book for violin. It was so exciting just being around musicians from all over Latin America. Also, for a girl who rarely gets the chance to hear live (classical) music, I was absolutely dazzeled by the almost nightly concerts.
I’m really interested in this method of teaching; and many concepts can be applied to different aspects of life. The basic idea is that children should learn music like they learn their first language, by listening and mirroring…we tend to think of music as something you either do or don’t have a gift for, but according to Dr. Suzuki’s research, children’s success rate of learning their mother-tongue (unless there is a physical limitation) is 100 percent, even very difficult tonal languages. And therefore, talent for music is taught, just like talent for speaking a language is taught. People are “tone-deaf” because their mother was tone deaf or because they weren’t exposed to music enough as a child.
There is so much that can be said about my two weeks studying the suzuki method, but one concept I’ve taken and really enjoyed thinking over is that being a good teacher is about dissecting problems into little doable steps, which in the end helps students perservere through difficult situations.
During a three day break in between classes, we had the opportunity to travel to a province to the south of Lima called Ica (the more famous town in the province is Pisco, where the famous drink comes from). Also, Ica was the province most affected by a large earthquake last year which left many towns devastated with little resources for redevelopment. We had the priveledge of visiting an organization called “construyendo Peru.” (building Peru) where groups of women in neighborhoods would organize themselves and through a grant from construyendo peru, the women would be paid a stipend and they work to build sidewalks, plazas and green areas in their neighborhoods. One sad thing is that since we are white, many people we would visit thought we had money to fund their projects, and it was difficult telling them we had nothing but ideas to contribute. As we were leaving one sight where we had been received with food and pisco, as I leaned over to tell one participant good-bye she whispered in my ear, “never forget the women.”
Having these two different experiences was important for me. The Suzuki festival was held in a private school in a rich part of the capitol city, where mothers came bustling in with SUV keys in their hands, speaking to the teachers in English, as their children pulled out their violins. There were two groups of children who participated from orphanages, one close to the city and one from a province far from Lima. (this is a picture of the students from the province Huancavelica in traditional dress) Still, it left me with the feeling that we have so much work to do. There are so many children that aren’t able to have this gift of music in their lives. Dr. Suzuki left us with the lovely philosophy that “every child can,” I suppose it is the work of the next generation to figure out how to really put that into practice.

End of the Year highlights

I know I'm about four months behind on blogging, so here are some images from the end of last year.

.there was a dance contest at 12:30 on a very hot day at the Parish anniversary party. My partner was persistent though, and we actually ended up winning.
This is one of my favorites. Alvaro's Graduation. He is one of 10 chidren (in the middle somewhere) and we were asked to be his padrinos of photography at his graduation.

THis is one of my favorite people in Bolivia. Her name is Benedicta. She is amazing. She works with the chapel and has a very beautiful inner strength. She washes our clothes for us (since we can't' seem to fathom spending half a day per week washing them ourselves) and she stays at our house and feeds our dogs whenever we're gone.
This one was taken at our friend Zulma's wedding, when I worked despartely to learn the wedding march in 3 days on violin. This is my first backless Christmas dress by the way.

The Dead Souls Arrive

This was a headline on the Saturday noon news. The day of the dead (November 2nd) has brought a great festival to all the cemeteries of Santa Cruz this weekend. Some, like my friends Irene and Idonlina, have traveled to their home towns to velar (to accompany) their loved ones who have passed on.
According to the teacher who teaches the sewing classes at our house, it’s also a dangerous time of the year, because people tend to die around that time. Last week she had the flu and she said her mom got especially worried and began lighting candles and praying for her.
There must be some kind of truth to this theory. On Sunday morning (the day of the dead) 4 people were buried in the cemetery beside our house, among them a neighbor of ours. I never actually met the woman, she was 93 and apparently never came out of her room. Both her daughter and her granddaughter participate in the sewing class, so we participated in the mass and the burial. This being the second time I’ve participated in a burial, I know that like many things in Bolivia, it involves sitting and waiting. As I sit I think about that moment when life as I know it will be no more, or even harder, of the time I may very well have to live whenever my own mama dies or my husband, or my friends, that space in time when your insides ache with memories.
On Sunday I took a stroll through our cemetery and found a hundred or so families, united. Depending where they come from, some have simple rice bread or empanadas, while others have huge spreads of doll-shaped breads, fruits or dishes of home-cooked meals. Some families had a quiet stillness about them. Only a few, like the 4 families whose loved ones so recently passed away, were actually crying.
I stopped by to chat with a friend, whose sister immediately put a glass of chicha (a traditional corn drink) and an empanada in my hand. “Oh yeah, he told me, “you just missed the band, it came over and we were dancing for awhile”. I looked over and sure enough there was a five-piece brass band making its way through the crowds of people. This same type of band often accompanies a funeral procession here.
This day is something I admire so much about this culture. When in North America do we ever take time away from our routines to think about those we have lost? We have one week of mourning (if that) and then all the rest of the grieving process is an individual one. I long for a space like this one to tend to those memories of people who have moved on from this world; a place to cry, a place to dance, a place to eat, and a place to share with others.

Sacrament and Sacrifice

We spent the last week preparing for the big anniversary party at the parish where we work. As I’ve mentioned before, birthdays are a very big deal here, and anniversaries are really just like birthdays, since they are birthdays of groups and beloved places. Our biggest participation included a traditional dance with the confirmation class. During many festivities here, groups of young people (and occasionally older people) get together and choose from a WIDE variety of traditional dances of Bolivia. Last year, we danced a “carnivalito” with our youth group (a bouncy dance from the eastern lowlands). This year the group was convinced it wanted to dance Tinku, a fascinating dance derived from a fighting ritual in the department of Potosi. This ritual takes place during different festivals, but especially over the 3rd and 4th of May, the celebration of the holy cross. While some say it was once a way of settling debts between tribes so as to prevent all-out war, the main idea is to spill blood as a sacrifice so that there may be a good harvest.
Because dancing is a requirement in every public school in Bolivia (yearly festivals are held in the schools where classes are graded on the dance they present), almost everyone has some knowledge of how the dance should go. Because of this, there are very specific steps that have developed and depending on the song in the genre, the choreography is different. For example, someone brought a CD with 15 Tinku songs, and as each song would begin, the women would begin dancing what they remembered seeing of that song. Unfortunately for us, everyone remembered about one quarter of the steps to each one. Much time was spent correcting each other and speculating what should go in the blanks. After 6 practices of such interactions, the last night before the dance, one of the boys brought two friends who were experts in Tinku. They divided us up between men and women, we worked for two hours (this dance is INCREDIBLY strenuous…I have thoughts of opening up a tinku studio someday…it could be a great weight-reducing system) and at the end, we had it together. The following day we met up (an hour later than we had said) on “balivian” street, which is known to everyone in santa cruz as the place to go to rent costumes. Having been given specific instructions by the expert, Raul, we went from shop to shop asking “do you have 8 costumes in fuchsia?” “will you give us at least 3 feathers for our hats?” “will you give us two sashes instead of just one?” “ do you have pants to fit a 6ft tall gringo?” After about a half hour of searching, we found our place. For about $3 USD each we were ready to go.
The night of the party was full of enthusiastic young people, all dressed up, practicing some last minute moves. Our dance went well, and at that last minute someone showed up with a fire-work like apparatus that emitted orange smoke. Unfortuntely, they set it off right under my feet which made breathing a bit of a challenge, but in the end the crowd LOVED the performance, which somehow made all the preparation worth it.
Stepping back from it, I find myself becoming introspective. What a strange way of celebrating church, with sequins, ribbons, smoke bombs and dances representing sacrifices made to mother earth. It’s definitely a stretch from my early Christian years in a little old country church in PA. But as I sat in mass and watched as small children came dancing in with bright green and white dresses and straw hats, the beautiful thing is that people are offering who they are to God…all that they are. So often in the evangelical church, members are encouraged to leave behind all that is culturally relavant to them, to take up the plain black suit, the white dress, and follow Jesus (well, Jesus’ North American Missionaries anyway). My life here is composed of such moments of walking (and dancing) beside Bolivians and then stepping back, trying to figure out which lens to look through, how to toss these questions around and to act in a way that my life is a more perfect offering…
There are a lot more fascinating things to learn about Tinku. The following are two you-tube clips. The first is a report on the actual ritual in Potosi and the second is of the dance (it’s not quite as good as we were, but it’ll do☺).
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSTojpCZhs
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=kesJ3BM-TLM